The development of international law is conventionally understood as a history in which the main characters (states and international lawyers) and events (wars and peace conferences) are European. Arnulf Becker Lorca demonstrates how non-Western states and lawyers appropriated nineteenth-century classical thinking in order to defend new and better rules governing non-Western states' international relations. By internalizing the standard of civilization, for example, they argued for the abrogation of unequal treaties. These appropriations contributed to the globalization of international law. With the rise of modern legal thinking and a stronger international community governed by law, peripheral lawyers seized the opportunity and used the new discourse and institutions such as the League of Nations to dissolve the standard of civilization and codify non-intervention and self-determination. These stories suggest that the history of our contemporary international legal order is not purely European; instead they suggest a history of a mestizo international law.

Winner, 2016 European Society for International Law Book Prize

'A global history of international law on a grand scale.'

Source: Jus Gentium: Journal of International Legal History

'… the book succeeds in its goal of unveiling an underdeveloped narrative in the history of international law. Lorca's core/periphery framework remains salient today, as Western countries continue to justifiably or unjustifiably intervene in peripheral states.'

Source: The Yale Journal of International Law

'… the book offers a wealth of knowledge, and a deep critique and reframing of our understanding of the system of international law, a perspective that should interest most of us involved in theorizing the international system.'

Pierre-Alexandre Cardinal Source: Revue québécoise de droit international